a term in one language rarely has an absolute synonymous meaning in the same language; besides, it rarely has an equivalent meaning in an l2. english synonyms of seeing and hearing are particularly grammatically and semantically different. frame semantics is a good tool for discovering differences between synonymous words in l2 and differences between supposed l1 and l2 equivalents. vocabulary ...

Much of philosophical logic and all of philosophy of language make empirical claims about the vernacular natural language. They presume semantics under which ‘and’ and ‘or’ are related by the dually paired distributive and absorption laws. However, at least one of each pair of laws fails in the vernacular. ‘Implicature’-based auxiliary theories associated with the programme of H.P. Grice do not...

Stochastic behavior—the probabilistic evolution of a system in time—is essential to modeling the complexity of real-world systems. It enables realistic performance modeling, quality-of-service guarantees, and especially simulations for biological systems. Languages like the stochastic pi calculus have emerged as effective tools to describe and reason about systems exhibiting stochastic behavior...

Externalist theories in natural language semantics have become the orthodoxy since Kripke is widely thought to have refuted descriptive theories involving internal cognitive representation of meaning. This shift may be seen in developments in philosophy of language of the 1970s – the direct reference “revolution against Frege” (Wettstein 2004, 66). Almog (2005, 493) writes of the “uprising agai...

This paper aims at demonstrating that the cognitive mechanisms underlying certain tropes (e.g. metaphor or metonymy) may assume variable degrees of conventionalisation, thereby giving rise to a range of phenomena along either side of the semantics/ pragmatics distinction. Examining specifically cases of metonymy, I propose a pragmatic account of creative, one-off metonymic expressions using the...

Complex Object models, semantic or knowledge representation models on the one side, and objectoriented models on the other side are currently considered candidates for future databases. Either of them have their particular strongpoints and weaknesses, such that up to now no single model could be identified to suit all needs. Database models provide limitted structuring capabilities and too poor...